Sunday, January 4, 2009

Hot Topic Iridescent Purple (no name, no label, website listed it as Iridescent Purple so that must be the official name. )

There are just some colors that make me stop dead in my tracks and stare. Sure, there are hundreds of colors that I love, but only a few that make me drop whatever I'm doing and exclaim, "HOLY S#!&^!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Hot Topic Iridescent Purple is one of them.

Unfortunately, this polish is impossible to photograph. I absolutely can not figure out how to capture its glory on camera. The picture above makes it look blue, but it is actually many shades of purple. Not blue at all. It also looks flat and not very shimmery in my picture. In real life it is so shimmery and sparkly, it looks like it's alive. It moves and twinkles and changes from light to dark purple, a little red, a little blue. It's like everything I love about OPI Ink, but amplified.

It's OPI Ink on steroids.

The only downside to this polish is the horrible bottle and brush design. The bottle looks cute, yes, but it's nearly impossible to use. The brush stem is long and skinny and the brush itself is a short, mop-like thing with uneven bristles that stick out at every angle. It's like trying to apply polish with a wet Shih-Tzu. Aside from the brush being messed up, the brush stem is so long that it's hard to remove the excess polish from it, which causes it to drip giant globs of polish onto your hand while you're using it. The bottle is also tall and skinny and has a wide mouth, which makes it ridiculously easy to knock over and spill all over everything.

Despite the hilariously bad bottle and brush design, this is one of the most perfect polishes in existence. I love it so much I even bought a backup, even though it's extremely rare for me to use enough of a polish to warrant a second bottle. I never get tired of looking at this color.

That color is one of my best polish buys as of late. I adore it. You're right about the bottle and the wonky brush though, they both suck. One way to get around the long stem if the brush glopping polish everywhere is to swirl it against the neck of the bottle as you remove it. That helped keep the polish on my nails and off of my hands and coffee table!

I've seen some really cool-looking colors at Hot Topic. I even saw some polishes with ultra-fine brushes for doing nail art and a knockoff Konad set (Faux-nad?). Sucks to hear about the crummy brush, though!

Oh, and Spinal Tap rocks! I still nearly split my sides with laughter during the scene with "Stonehenge".

I have this color, and I've been wearing it on my toes for a long time now. I love my OPI Ink, but this color really does rock my socks. It also lasted a long time for me without chipping which is a first.

Oooh great swatches! Yep, your right, that's the name. HT don't have official names I always have to look on my receipt. The brush does suck tho, but I try to look past that because the colors rock. :)

Jaxapella is right- just swirl the brush as you pull it out of the bottle. I absolutely HATE the HT bottles. I have 2 awesome HT colors that I rarely ever use just because the bottles & brushes are so terrible. It wasn't always this way either! When HT first opened up, their polish was in normal, Love My Nails type bottles. No idea why they changed them to such a horrible design.

Scrangie- how the bloody hell do you get your polish so dang perfect next to your cuticles? Everytime I try to do mine like that it's so difficult I just say @#$% it & glop it on.

Hi there again !i just love your new nail polishes..anyhow, thanks for making a response to my comments. I would like to ask if you use coupon codes on the sites that you gave me ?I am thinking of ordering at 8ty8beauty.com today.Hope to hear from you my lovely.x

Deb, hahah Stonehenge!! YES!! LOL And Hot Topic does some amazing colors, they are definitely worth the stupid brush :)

Tarotbydiana, isn't that so funny? I'm in love with cheap polishes lately! Glad you feel the same way <3

MariahGem, it's so amazing! I need a magical camera to capture it :)

Luckymirai, I got mine on hottopic.com :)

HoneyHoneyNY, how cool! I LOVE OPI Ink but this is just WOW. WOW!! :D

Steph, I'm dying to get those new Hot Topic colors you swatched! Planning a big haul :) Thanks for doing what you do! <3

Kabuk1, okay I really have to try that method! And for the polish application- part of it is just practice since I've been doing it so long, and part is technique. It helps to not have much polish on the brush, and to stop the brush a little before the cuticle and press down on the bristles. That usually makes the perfect "U" shape :)

Luckymirai, Oooh what colors did you choose? :) 8ty8beauty doesn't really have coupon codes for polish, but they have a 20% Off code for IBD products (IBD20OFF is the code)

Sanna, I thought you might like this color! :) I will keep that in mind.... hehehe

N, yes, I loved it! And welcome back! :) We missed you!

Javy, indeed! :)

The Asian Girl, isn't it just the most fantastically cool thing EVER??? *hugs it*

Hi!I got 14 China Glaze nail polishes. But i am annoyed on their ordering process. I paid using my mastercard for $38.14 and I have no idea how much they will deduct for the shipping cost. I haven't receive the invoice on the shipping cost and I can't remember how many times I emailed Tom. He sent me 3 messages with the same content !blah ! I don't know if my package is on the process. grrrr...don't know what to do..

Luckymirai, don't worry! That's just how they are. You don't normally get an invoice until the day they ship your order, and that's when they add in shipping. It only takes a couple days to process usually, and Tom is very helpful but is always very busy and writes short emails :) They have good customer service, so I wouldn't worry about it too much, they will take good care of you. :)

thanks for this message Scrangie..it calms me.LOL. tom,emailed me this morning and he said that the order is in process.But he asked about "order number". I didn't notice that there is such and I have no idea. I wrote him and he hasn't replied since. Oh and thanks for the hottopic site.. cool products they have there.Unfortunately, the iridescent nail polish cannot be ship to Japan.Love you Scrangie ! Muah.

I think different people react to this color in different ways. On my nails, the blinginess/glowiness was just too much-- I felt like I was in a disco porn.But in general I am a huge fan of HT colors...

Your inability to photograph the purple polish without the picture rendering the color as a deep blue is not your fault.

This is a known problem with many models of digital cameras. Sometimes it can be fixed (somewhat) by turning your saturation setting down one notch (if your camera permits you to manipulate the saturation this way).

Someday, the camera makers will fix this, but for now... eh, you take your chances, especially with cameras a couple of years old. I hear some of the newest are better at purple, but my own camera is a 2006 model and never does capture purple properly.